Ipsos Update – January 2018

Happy New Year! January’s edition of Ipsos Update features new papers on Audience Measurement and Sensory Spatial Segmentation, Canada's "critical numbers", the Digital Gov' Barometer, Perils of Perception, and a round-up of some of our research in Europe over the past year.

We start with Perils of Perception, our survey examining the gap between people’s perception and the reality in 38 countries. We discover that on many subjects – including murder rates, terrorist deaths, teenage pregnancy and diabetes – things are NOT as bad as they seem. For example, people hugely overestimate the proportion of prisoners in their countries who are immigrants; the average guess is 28% when it’s actually only 15%. And teenage pregnancy is overestimated across the world; overall, the average guess is that 20% of teenage girls give birth each year when the reality is 2%.

Shifting our attention to the ever-changing media environment, Audience Measurement 5.0 sets out the five ages of audience measurement at a time where the quest for total understanding of audiences is higher than it’s ever been. Focussing on the fifth age in particular, this white paper also considers the impact of the digital revolution.

On the topic of digital, a new report examines the digital transformation of the national government as seen by citizens in Germany, France, Norway and the UK. The Digital Gov’ Barometer finds that the majority of citizens believe that the development of digital state and government services in their country is progressing.

Staying on the continent, our Europe 2017 round-up reflects on a selection of our research across Europe over the past year. Showcasing the continent’s diversity, it provides some insights into how attitudes and behaviours vary in different geographic, economic and cultural contexts.

Also exploring public attitudes, Public Perspectives Canada presents the country’s “critical numbers” from 2017. These include positive sentiment towards the national economy growing from 52% to 68% since the start of the year, and 35% of Canadians citing healthcare as their most pressing concern. Other subjects covered in the report include money, immigration, the environment and social cohesion.

Meanwhile, the Ipsos MORI Almanac is our UK team’s annual round-up of insights and analysis, reflecting on a memorable year which has seen Britain often portrayed as divided. These divisions include a deep generational split, divides over the social and economic priorities, competing views about Britain’s role in the world, and threats to people’s sense of identity.

One of the themes presented in the Almanac – the underlying sense of fragmentation – is also explored in the latest report from The Reputation Council. It discovers how communications leaders across 22 countries are responding to an increasingly fractured communications landscape, when the pace of change is quickening and many companies are feeling challenged just to keep up.

Finally, Sensory Spatial Segmentation (SSS) is a new white paper presenting a fresh approach to segmentation studies. Consumer-based preference segmentation studies can be complex and costly. Prompted by this, Ipsos have developed SSS to deliver a segmentation solution on a smaller incomplete test design, challenging the widely-held assumption that multi-day complete designs are necessary for the strongest results.